That day, passengers noticed new hand sanitizer stations and crew members wearing gloves, but life on the Grand Princess, which advertises 1,301 cabins, 20 restaurants and lounges, about a dozen shops, and four freshwater swimming pools, otherwise went on as normal. Guests prepared for a ukulele concert, played bridge at shared tables, and took line-dancing classes. That night, Laurie Miller and her husband, John, attended True or Moo, a show featuring an emcee in a cow costume; the following morning, John joined about 200 other passengers in the ship’s Broadway-style theater for a lecture on Clint Eastwood movies. "I’m surprised they’re even letting this event happen," he whispered to a nearby friend. "This is a big crowd."
Around lunchtime on March 5, the ship’s captain, John Smith, announced a quarantine over the ship’s public address system. All 2,422 passengers needed to go to their cabins to shelter in place. Laurie Miller was in the Da Vinci dining room eating chocolate peanut butter ice cream. "Oh my God," she remembers thinking. "This is real." Then she ordered more ice cream.
Other passengers ambled to the ship’s stores and dining areas, too, to take advantage of the perks while they could. "Evvverrrybody went to the buffet," recalls 61-year-old Debbi Loftus, who was traveling with her parents. "I just thought, Oh, crap, the ukulele concert is going to be canceled." Crowds of elderly guests filed to their cabins through narrow hallways and down the stairs of the ship’s 17 decks. Sixty-nine-year-old Karen Dever tried an elevator only to find it packed with fellow passengers. "So much for social distancing!" she joked aloud.
As the lockdown progressed, the ship became a fixture on cable news and social media around the world, livestreamed by frustrated, scared passengers as if it were the Titanic of the TikTok age. Of the first 46 crew and passengers who were tested for the virus, 21 were positive. President Trump suggested they should be prevented from disembarking. At the time the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. was still low, and Trump implied that the vessel’s caseload would make it look like the U.S. was doing a poor job of handling the pandemic. "I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship," he said.